Greetings: A Brief Summary of Older Halloween Articulations

Happy Halloween friends. Where I am, that is, in Chicago, Illinois, it is snowing lightly. Everything melts as it reaches the asphalt or cement sidewalks, only sticking to surfaces on grass, coats, or cars. It is late morning (about 10:30 am now), and I'm drinking hot apple cider, letting the warm sugary drip fill my tongue, slide down my throat, and finally fill my belly and bloodstream. I wrote some of this post yesterday, but I'm going to finish it today. 
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Halloween. The very term Halloween is telling of our culture's Christian influence, as it is a term that comes from the word hallowed (also English, but older). If you are Catholic or Christian, you might recognize the root word - hallow - from the Lord's Prayer:

Our Father
Who art in Heaven
Hallowed be thy name...

Hallowed means honored. This brings us to the Christian understanding of Halloween (previously "All Hallows' Evening", October 31st) as a time to honor the spirits of the dead (Morrow, 16). All Souls Day is celebrated together with All Saints Day on November 3rd within the Christian faith as well (609 AD, according to www.catholic.org)

But, as with all fantastic things, history stretches further and further back and we find that this event - marking the turn of the season from a brisk autumn to cold winter - is a conglomeration of many different influences and traditions, cultures and beliefs, not just the direct and dominant Christian
connection observed in its name. Instead, the celebration is a meeting point of at least three seemingly divergent paths which includes the culture of the Ancient Celts and the traditions of the Ancient Romans as well the religion of Christianity (Morrow).

I want to start with the Celts (an Indo-European ethnic group that "officially" lasted from about 800 BC - 600 AD: you can tell the antiquty right away from the word Celt, which refers to an tool and weapon they primarily used). 

The Celts held a festival every year to mark the end of summer and the transition to winter. This festival was called Samhain. It is this Celtic festival of Samhain in which we can directly associate much of the aesthetic and ritual significance of Halloween still practiced today:

"Not all writers agree on precisely what went on at the feast of Samhain, but many stress its elemental primitivism and its enduring legacy to the character of Halloween, particularly in terms of its omens, propitiations, and links to the otherworld. Although the divinatory practices associated with Halloween have been revitalized by two opposing groups: new-age pagans and the religious Right. The first has stressed the 'natural uncanniness' of Halloween and its therapeutic qualities in helping people 'touch the realms of myth and imagination' and 'come to terms with their fears of change and death'. The Christian evangelists, in contrast, have denounced 'satanism' and its glorification of evil. Some have even claimed that Halloween is 'one of the four black sabbaths when witches meet to worship the devil.'" (Rogers, 12).

Evidence suggests that Celtic Samhain (pronounced sow-an) feasts included sacrifices to their gods (they were pagan in the best sense and believed in the gods pertaining to different elements of nature as well as the supernatural). These sacrifices, it is suggested, were both animal and human, and we can only guess as to what kinds of prayers were attached to them. Perhaps they were given in thanks for the harvest of the year, perhaps they were given in hopes to have a smooth winter despite a lack the food, harsh weather, and the necessity of retreating indoors. We can also guess that there was food and dancing and other rites performed especially by whom the Celts called the Druids: high priests and lawmakers. Oak trees and oak tree formations held a special place in the folklore of the Celts because these were the sites where Druids would practice their rituals...

Part of the spellbinding excitement and mystery of the Samhain tradition is that we have to use our best judgement on a lot of it without much official evidence to work with. Part of this is because the Celts did not (as we know) keep a written record of their culture. However, their traditions were kept safe through oral storytelling and much of this has been preserved by Irish culture (the geographical place we now know as Ireland is the space where most Celts were forced/pushed into through the rise and fall of empire, war, colonization, and religious invasions). Samhain should be regarded as one part of the mythological story of Ireland and pays due respect to a pastoral culture of old (Rogers, 20). 

Though it also should be noted: though the Celts did not have the same figure of the Devil or Satan as in Christianity, they did believe in an underworld, and more prominently, a place called Tir nan Og: a happy place where all souls were believed to go after the passing of the body... unless they got kicked out... and ghosts would haunt the world during this particular time when weather shifted and the earth responded to that shift in elemental and uncanny ways.

"The Celtic dead could, and regularly did, reach from their afterlife into the world of the living. This was especially easy for them at Samhain time, a turning point into the Celtic calendar... for the Celts, transitional points - such as the shore, or midnight, when one day becomes another - were considered to have magical power. At such places or moments, things were in flux, belonging fully to neither one side nor the other. Chaos had the upper hand. A small action might push or pull you to either side. Samhain, when one year became another, was the most important turning point. Many legendary battles and crucial moments in the lives of the Celtic heroes were said to have occurred at Samhain. It was believed that at this time of the year, the boundary between Tir nan Og and the world of the living was at its thinnest. Spirits could communicate with those they had left behind." (Morrow, 7).

"What was especially noteworthy about Samhain was its status as a borderline festival... it represented a time out of time, a brief interval 'when the normal order of the universe is suspended' and 'charged with a peculiar preternatural energy'..." (Rogers, 21)

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It makes sense chronologically to shift our focus to the Roman contributions of this holiday. During the first century AD, the Romans conquered Britain. Neighboring regions, in places now known as Scotland and Ireland, were more fortified against the Romans during that time, but the Roman influence was impossible to ward off completely, leading to the emergence of Romanized Celts (Morrow, 11).

The Roman Empire, already pagan, strengthened their folklore from their pastoral history with a renewed appreciation for their tales and beliefs brought about by their new knowledge of agriculture. Vertumnus was the god of the changing seasons and Pomona was the god of orchards and the harvest (Morrow, 11). The story (a love story) between those two Roman gods mixed with the festival of Samhain, broadening the scope of the seasonal celebrations ever wider. Apple bobbing was a game invented during this time, just for competitive fun with the harvested goods. A more meaningful game was the peeling of an apple: the longer you could peel without breaking the skin, the longer the peeler's life would be (Morrow, 12).

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The Roman Empire became Christianized by the 4th Century AD - through Constantine, I'm supposing, through the Edict of Milan, Council of Nicaea, and Edict of Thessalonica (see: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/ancient-medieval/christianity/a/roman-culture). Because of the difficultly of converting people who held their traditions so steadfastly, understandably since their entire culture revolved around these rituals paying respect to their harvest every year, the Christians instead absorbed much of the pagan practices into their canon of saints. For example, the "Christianization of the goddess Brigid to St. Brigid of Kildaire" (Morrow, 14). It was Pope Gregory the III who moved All Saints Day to align itself with November 1st, and All Souls Day on November 2nd during the 8th Century, finishing the ties to All Hallows' Day that we now consider occurring side by side with Halloween.

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If you take away anything from this I hope it is this: we take so many celebrations for granted today, especially when we are encouraged to participate in events and parades and trick-or-treats without really knowing why or from whence it came. Know that everything has a history behind it, know that that history is complicated and probably not from one single person, source, or origin, and know that the specifics of these shared histories are worth understanding and finding so we can better appreciate what a wonderful, and indeed, spooky and mysterious, spellbinding and enchanting, day and night like Halloween really is. 

Don't forget to remember those who have died and passed through. As we face Climate Change today, reflect on how magical it is that we can still, at least where I am, feel the turning of the seasons and its potent energy, calling us to come inside and reflect on what it is all worth. 

One more thing: Halloween, as it was celebrated in the examples above, didn't just last one day... but all the way through the end of November. I'm going to stretch my observance of it that long as well... 

Sending love,
F

References:

Morrow, Ed. The Halloween Handbook: A Complete Guide to Trick, Treats, Activities, Crafts, Decorations, Recipes, History, Costumes. Citidel Press: New York. 2001. Print. 

Rogers, Nicholas. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 2002. Print.